


capax infiniti

by vyther_original (vyther15)



Category: Original Work, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown - Holly Black
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Original Character-centric, outsider pov, overuse of parenthesis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24040006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyther15/pseuds/vyther_original
Summary: The Lady had lied her way into the Spider’s court; fed him half-truths and bits of her past. Enough to make him believe her, enough to make him trust her.(Not enough for him to know her.)She told the Spider she was called Lady. (True: she was called Lady. She was also called many other things. She has been called Imren and Victoria and angel and demon, but she has been called Lady the longest of all the names she could (would) give to him.) (The name given to her by her father, her mother, is sacred. It is not for hands like the Spider’s, hands that would twist it and tarnish it, make it something evil. No, Bouran Samad is hers to keep, and not give away.)She told the Spider she did not know how old she was, that the first few years of her vampirism were a blur. (Lie: She knew exactly how old she was. She was older than the Spider would ever be, could ever hope to be.) (She had seen a man die upon a cross, and the world go dark because of it, and she had seen his followers, his friends, his family claim he had returned three days later.) (She had watched Rome rise, and she had watched it fall.)
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Original Character & Gavriel | Thorn of Istra, Tana Bach & Gavriel | Thorn of Istra
Kudos: 5





	capax infiniti

**Author's Note:**

> I first read Coldest Girl in Coldtown in middle school (I think). I've re-read it a few times since then. When I saw the news about the new Twilight book, I was like, "This is really upsetting. I need to read a vampire book that doesn't have the male vampire love interest stalk the female protagonist." So I checked out an e-book on my phone and reread it in less than three hours. Then I was like, I have this character from an original work of mine that would fit really well into this universe. And then I realized that I probably created that original work after I read CGiC the first time. Anyway, hope you enjoy. 
> 
> (I don't think the violence is described in any more detail than it would be in canon, but I tagged it anyway, because canon is kinda graphic.)
> 
> (Also, comments are always appreciated.)
> 
> (Title is Latin and means holding the infinite.) (I think. Google wasn't super helpful.)

The Lady had lied her way into the Spider’s court; fed him half-truths and bits of her past. Enough to make him believe her, enough to make him trust her.

(Not enough for him to know her.)

She told the Spider she did not know who turned her, only that he was dead. (True: he was dead, and she remembered his face, his name. She would never forget, no matter how long she survived. But she did not know him. She had not learned what he was like, what he preferred to do with his time, or anything that made him a person.)

She told the Spider that she had turned one human in the time since her making. (True: she had turned one human, and then another, and another. She turned one, yes, and then she turned more: Seraphine, Shima, Elueia, Corin, Mathias. She did not turn anyone unwilling, and she sat out the Cold with those who changed their mind.) (She did not judge those who clung to the sun.)

She told the Spider she was called Lady. (True: she was called Lady. She was also called many other things. She has been called Imren and Victoria and Angel, and demon, but she has been called Lady the longest of all the names she could (would) give to him.) (The name given to her by her father, her mother, is sacred. It is not for hands like the Spider’s, hands that would twist it and tarnish it, make it something evil. No, Bouran Samad is hers to keep, and not give away.)

She told the Spider she did not know how old she was, that the first few years of her vampirism were a blur. (Lie: She knew exactly how old she was. She was older than the Spider would ever be, could ever hope to be.) (She had seen a man die upon a cross, and the world go dark because of it, and she had seen his followers, his friends, his family claim he had returned three days later.) (She had seen a man preach to the cities that the true god had whispered the Truth in his ear, and she had seen that man chased from Mecca to Medina.) (She had watched Rome rise, and she had watched it fall.)

She knew the Spider believed her, and she knew he expected her to bring forth her vampire, the one she turned, so that he could pass judgement. She thought it was rather redundant of him to do this trial twice in a row.

***

The room where the Spider held the Lady’s trial was much different than the room he had held Lucien’s, where he had claimed a dark-haired boy to be his Thorn. It was smaller, but the Lady did not chafe at the slight. It was obvious that she was considered less important than an apple farmer’s son, but she knew that she was more powerful than anyone else in the room.

Mathias, the vampire she chose to be her one spawn (how she hated that word), stood uneasily next to her.

(The last time he stood before a trial like this, he was sentenced to death. The Lady does not fault him for his unease.)

The Spider has been talking during her musings.

The Lady cannot find it in herself to care about what he is saying. Lucien may have worried that if he ran, the Spider would find him.

She knows that the Spider would not find her, if she were to run.

 _Lady_ , Mathias urges, and she smiles, sweet and serene, at the Spider.

 _My apologies. You’ll have to repeat that last bit_ , she says, recalling the lessons her mother gave her as a girl. Lessons on how to speak to the men who believed themselves better than her. On how to appear smaller than she was, but never forget her worth. _I appear to have become lost in thought,_ she adds, as if it weren’t obvious.

_(Always let them think they have the upper hand, Bouran. You must be who they think you are, until you are capable of ripping their throat out with your bare hands. Only then do you reveal your hand.)_

(She had never had a typical childhood.)

(She had never been a typical child.)

 _I asked for the name of your maker, girl_ , the Spider repeats, slowly, deliberately, as if she is stupid.

The Lady cocks her head, still smiling. _I don’t see what my maker has to do with this trial. I made Mathias, not my maker, who is dead._ Her smile grows a little wider. _Dead and gone, just like yours._

The Spider blinks. Once.

The Lady’s smile grows. _My maker made yours._

 _That is not true,_ the Spider snarls.

The Lady raises an eyebrow, dropping her facade. She could tear out his throat with her bare hands if she wanted. She had had the upper hand since she walked into the room.

 _Is that so?_ She steps forward. _Oh, darling Henrie, did you think that if you killed your maker, you could become him?_ She laughs. _And despite that, you’re still not stronger. You drank his blood to outgrow his power, to become the Spider, and you're still weaker than me._

The Spider falters, stepping back. His guards, only two of them this time, move to step in, but she stops them with a glance.

It feels much better to not hide her power. (Her age.) (Her strength.) Henrie trips over his own foot and falls.

The Lady considers killing him, but there would be no fun in that, and besides, she would have to take over his job.

That would be boring.

Besides, little Henrie is looking terrified enough without that.

 _You’re going to leave me alone, little Spider,_ she says. _And you are going to leave my vampires alone. All of them, not just Mathias._ She cocks her head again, considering. _And I will drop in every once and awhile, check in on that Russian boy’s training. He’ll be a good Thorn, I’m sure._

She steps over the Spider, motioning for Mathias to follow her. He does.

 _I know I was_ , she says before she leaves the room.

***

It’s several decades before she sees the Thorn of Istra again, hunting a vampire she knows Lucien made. She doesn’t tell him; Gavriel already knows.

She has a new name now. She calls herself Brionella. Mathias created it for her, after she told him the name given to her at birth.

( _It can mean whatever you want it to mean_ , he’d said, _and it will sound normal enough to anyone you tell_.)

(She trusts Mathias, more so than she trusts any of the other vampires she has made.) 

(Except Seraphine. Seraphine will always know her best. Seraphine will always have the most of her trust.)

(She knows he trusts her with a part of him he hadn’t trusted even his mother with.)

Gavriel stays at the same hotel she is at, the next day. Brionella pays him a visit at midday.

Mathias comes with her, a blond shadow. He’s a little over a century now, and a little wiser now too.

He waits by the door as Brionella speaks with Gavriel.

***

Brionella tells Gavriel a story, one her mother told her.

It’s a story about a wolf in sheep’s clothes, and a girl who saves herself, and a dragon that burns the palace down.

It is not a very happy story.

(That does not make it a bad story.

Only a sad one.)

She tells a story where the good guys die. The monsters win.

And Gavriel understands.

***

Brionella receives a letter from Elisabet seven years after Casper Morales.

Elisabet writes that Lucien is the reason Gavriel is caged like a dog. (The reason he is mad as one.) She says that Lucien turned and turned and turned more and more and more humans that looked like Gavriel’s brother, like his sister. Gavriel let Casper Morales go, yes, but Lucien made him in the first place. And when Gavriel lost his little game, Lucien gave him back to the Spider.

Brionella figures the girl became guilty. She doubts Lucien knows Elisabet has told anyone.

(She doubts he would let her stay alive if he did.)

(He was always so possessive. She worries for Elisabet, stuck with him for all eternity.)

***

Brionella visits the Spider in the catacombs of Paris, several years after Casper Morales.

Gavriel is locked in a cage, knotted intestines looped around the bars. Someone is feeding him, something not blood. He vomits, and is fed that too. 

Brionella has seen worse. But she also knows that Gavriel does not deserve this much cruelty. 

(Mathias did not deserve that much cruelty, either.)  
  
(Gavriel reminds her of Mathias.)  
  
(She decides she will help him, even if it is just speaking to him as if he is normal. As if he is not being taken apart and put back together and fed pieces of himself every night, night after night after night.)

She tells him more stories. Some of them have happy endings.

Most of them don’t.

(Maybe they are not appropriate for someone being tortured, but Brionella does not know many happy stories.)

Gavriel tells her a story, only one. He sings it, off-key and deranged, and only meant for the two of them to hear, in the middle of the day when everyone else is sleeping. 

(Brionella knows his plan, if he ever gets free.)

(She doesn’t promise to help. She knows better than to promise that.)

(Instead she tells more stories, hoping he can hear her through the pain.)

The Spider catches her one day, and she is barred from the part of the catacombs with Gavriel’s cage. (As if that could stop her.)

Gavriel laughs.

He laughs and laughs and laughs, and Brionella knows something in him has broken. That madness has overcome him. She watches him kill the videographer. She is not frightened, though she knows the other vampires are. He is mad and gleeful with it.

She watches the Spider flog him with razor-tipped ropes, and he laughs still.

Brionella sends up a prayer to a god she isn’t sure she believes in, and wouldn’t answer her if she did. (She leaves Gavriel behind in a den of monsters. She has other monsters to attend to, and Gavriel would not appreciate being rescued. He would rather escape on his own, she tells herself.)

(She knows she is lying.)

(She does not stop.)

She does give him a little of her blood, before she leaves.

(Enough to let him heal a little faster.)

(Enough to let him destroy the Spider.)

(Enough to let him escape to fulfill his fairytale lullaby.)

As she is traveling back to the United States, she gets word from the Spider’s men that there is a new Spider, and she should pledge her loyalty.

(She smiles, burning the letter over a candle. Gavriel can ask for her loyalty in person.)

***

Brionella visits Lucien in the Springfield Coldtown, having collected Mathias, who prefers Jax now, and Seraphine, who hasn't changed in the many centuries Brionella has known and loved her. Seraphine and Jax select a house on the edge of Coldtown, just outside the wall, and make themselves at home. Brionella flashes a smile at the guards at the gate, gives them a glimpse of her ruby-red eyes, and finds herself in Coldtown.

She waits for the arrival of Gavriel by exploring. She goes to the Eternal Ball a few times. She goes to Lucien's mansion one night, dressed in a man's tuxedo. She wraps her hair into a vibrant green scarf and doesn't bother with any make-up. She flashes a fanged grin and blood-red eyes at the bouncer, and he lets her in with a huff.

(She knows she is underdressed. That is the point.)

She wonders if Lucien remembers her.

(He doesn’t. She isn’t surprised.)

Elisabet does. She sees Brionella and drags her into a side room. She asks if Gavriel is okay. Brionella tells her he is alive.

(She refuses to say more than that.)

Elisabet is gone the next day.

A week after that, the Sundown Massacre happens, and Brionella regrets saying even that much.

But when she realizes that there are survivors, she allows herself a bit of hope, for the mad little boy. For his lullaby of revenge she heard him singing, when everyone else left him alone.

(When she gave him the tool he needed to escape.)

***

Jax is at the party where Gavriel turns everyone.

He tells Brionella later that Gavriel disappeared before he could talk to him, but Brionella can taste the lie.

She doesn’t force it out of him. It is not her secret to know.

***

Seraphine is with Brionella at Lucien’s party the night Gavriel kills Lucien’s guards. Samuel, the older freckled one, gets stabbed through the heart with a silver dagger. Gavriel had thrown it from across the room, and startled everyone.

Percival, white haired and young, despite appearances, has his head scissored off.

 _Good entrance, right?_ Gavriel asks, and Brionella is inclined to agree. She hopes that he will just kill Lucien, here in front of the cameras and everyone, but he doesn’t.

Instead, Lucien kills Elisabet, and then he cuts the cameras, and Gavriel joins him in taking down the Spider, and Brionella has to keep herself from laughing.

( _Oh, sweet, naive boy, manipulative little Lucien. Do you really think the Spider would have let him out of Europe? Out of Paris?_ she doesn't say.)

( _The Spider is dead_ , she doesn’t say. _The Spider is dead, and his successor is ready and waiting to kill you, and the Lady will stand back and watch_.)

***

Brionella intercepts the Spider’s men as they head towards Lucien’s house. She convinces them to let her pretend to be one of them. She trades places with a German woman. After three decades living in Germany, from the 1970s to the 2000s, she had a German accent of her own she can call upon when needed.

She did so to throw off Lucien, who would not recognize her unless she told him her name, and even then, he probably wouldn’t. He never much cared for the women, and she never cared much for him.

She holds the girl, the survivor of the Sundown Massacre, Tana Bach, and she can tell when Gavriel realizes it is her and not the guard he thought was coming. He can tell when he realizes she is here for him, and not to help Lucien.

Tana says, _I wanted to kill you all on my own,_ to Lucien, and Brionella holds back a smile. Lucien stabs Gavriel, and Theodore, a dark skinned vampire Brionella was introduced to tonight, tells Lucien that the Spider is coming. 

(As if he wasn’t already here) 

(As if he hadn’t been here the whole time.)

Gavriel grins at Tana, tells her to go, and Brionella knows the exact second Tana figures everything out because she starts laughing.

When she calms, she manages to spit out that the Spider is already here.

 _I’m the Spider now,_ Gavriel says, licking his blood off of the dagger from his stomach. Brionella stabs one of Lucien’s guards. Theodore and Rose stab the other two, and Lucien’s three guards fall to the ground one after another.

Gavriel explains himself to Lucien. Unnecessarily, she thinks, but she remembers the cameras, and she remembers that this is being broadcast out to the world.

She doesn’t listen to most of Gavriel’s speech, until he asks, _Who in the world would allow me to be saved?_ and she regrets.

 _No one with any sense,_ Lucien replies, and then, _But why did you go? Why go on some circuitous road trip with a pair of teenagers?_

Gavriel grins again. _I liked the way they looked at me. I liked driving. And I wanted to see what would happen._

Brionella returns her attention to Tana for a moment, making sure the girl hasn’t fainted. She was unsteady a few minutes ago.

Then she looks back to Gavriel. He moves to kill Lucien, and then he hesitates.

Brionella doesn’t have time to react before Lucien has grabbed Tana by the throat.

Lucien yells at them to leave. Brionella watches the terror in the girl’s eyes, watches the way her hands scrabble at her thigh before closing around something. She listens when Gavriel motions them out.

And she stops to watch as Tana stabs a dagger up into Lucien’s chest.

(As Tana forces him to tell the world about Casper.)

(As Lucien begs her to leave him alive.)

(As Tana ignores his pleas and drives the knife through his heart.)

Brionella lets her leave. She stops Theodore from making her stay, and she watches as Tana leaves the grounds of Lucien Moreau’s mansion.

Brionella takes Gavriel to the Eternal Ball, flashing a fanged smile at the bouncer. Brionella sees Tana immediately, but Gavriel’s gaze is drawn by a younger girl wearing a garnet necklace. He starts to give her a message before cutting himself off.

He leaves the ball empty handed, and Brionella remembers the first story she told him, a decade ago. (A lifetime ago.) The good guys haven’t died, she knows.

(But she doesn’t think they’ve won, either.)

(The monsters are still winning.)

(She thinks Gavriel calls himself the monster.)

(He is not wrong, but he is not right, either.)

***

Brionella selects a room in Lucien's mansion and makes it hers. She finds her favorite novel in the east wing library and hands it to Gavriel, tells him to go sit with his human girl and help her sweat out the Cold.

 _It will take Tana longer than 88 days,_ Brionella tells him. _She has drunk more vampire blood. The transformation of her teeth will not reverse, but the craving for blood will disappear after 100 days._

Gavriel thanks her, takes her book and a selection of other materials to read aloud to Tana. He tells her his plan, sounding terrifyingly lucid, and then disappears into the night with one of Tana's human friends.

Gavriel and Tana and Tana’s friend Aiden leave Coldtown one hundred and one days after Tana and Gavriel locked themselves in a cellar to wait out the Cold. Tana leave Coldtown something a little more than human, but she has no cravings for blood.

Brionella takes her family, takes Seraphine and Jax, and goes to Brazil, where Shima and Eleuia have built a life for themselves. Corin finds them somewhere in Peru. 

Brionella smiles a fanged smile at the world, and the world smiles back.

(How could it not?)

(It is alive, and to be alive means to be able to smile.)

(If you cannot smile, you are not alive.)

(But that does not mean you are dead.)

The Lady smiles, and the world cannot help but smile in return.

**Author's Note:**

> Brionella is referred to as The Lady at the beginning because she was between names. Brionella probably is a real name somewhere, but I made it up when I was like thirteen and now any name I try to give her sounds wrong. But I also wanted her to have a real name with actual meaning that reflected her middle eastern heritage. Bouran means thunderstorm, I think. (Surface googling.) It is a middle eastern name. (Specifically Turkish, if I remember correctly.)
> 
> Also, in case it was unclear, Brionella is from before Jesus and Muhammed and the Roman Empire. Like, she's old as fuck. Seraphine is from around the time Charlemagne(?) was crowned King of the Holy Roman Empire by the pope. (I don't remember the year that happened, but it was a long long time ago.) In case it was unclear, Brionella and Seraphine are together, and have been together for several centuries. Almost a thousand years now. Seraphine basically just chills out in the French countryside while her wife goes globetrotting.
> 
> Jax and Brionella are not together. Jax is very gay, even though it is not brought up, it is alluded to. Jax was turned at the end of the French Revolution. His full name is Mathias Augustin Jacquinot. He gets Jax from his last name.
> 
> I really wanted Brionella to break Gavriel out from the catacombs, but I also wanted it to stay canon-compliant, so instead I had her give him just a little bit of her blood, because I thought it was kinda weird how he managed to get out of the cage and kill everyone when he'd been tortured for a decade and all the vamps holding him were a lot older and stronger than him.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed.


End file.
